Hardware·18,997 discussions

BSOD crash during gaming

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I have a Blue Screen of Death that appears while playing games such as the Call of Duty series, or pretty much any other series. The BSOD’s are usually random, I can play for five hours straight with no problems sometimes, and other times I can only play for 10 minutes before it crashes. Again, this only happens when gaming, I can do anything else on the computer just fine.

My specs
Amd Athlon 3.0ghz dual core processor
2 gigs ram DDR2
Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT 512mb graphics
Windows Xp Pro service pack 3

I have the Stop message as well

Stop 0x0000000A (0xBA338980, 0x0000001E, 0x000000001, 0x804FB84C).

If anyone can help me to determine what it is that is causing the crash I would most appreciate it.

Thank you.

Topic

Sounds like a driver issue

In reply to BSOD crash during gaming

Knowing the text that accompanies that error would help.

My suggestion is to update or reload your video drivers and see if that fixes it.

More information is available in the Microsoft Knowledgebase.

Not sure

In reply to Sounds like a driver issue

Recently updated video driver to absolute latest driver, still get the same Stop error message.
I was hoping someone might be able to give me more insight as to what the parameters mean.
The error message displays “IRQL not equal to” (not verbatim but close to what it says).

Mine did same

In reply to BSOD crash during gaming

Its the 9600 drivers, get the latest version, seems to fix it for me, happened for me during dragon age. Stop error was on nv4disp which is the nvidia DLL driver.

Just Updated

In reply to Mine did same

Just updated the other day, restarted computer, started playing Modern Warfare 2, after about 4 rounds, got the BSOD with same error message again.

Though I have heard that Nvidia releases bad drivers.

Did the BSOD say what file caused the error, nv4disp?

In reply to Just Updated

You can also try an older version of the drivers.

[b]
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

The problem seems to be caused by the following file: nv4_disp

~~~~~~

~~~~~~
Technical Information
**** STOP: (blah blah blah)

nv4_disp
Beginning dump of physical memory
(blah blah)
[/b]

References to nv4_disp like that means its your video driver. Got any of those?

The other you might get is
[b]IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL[/b]

I am unsure what this means, but it shows up as a problem on a lot of EA games forums.

[i]It can happen if you dont uninstal the older 196.21 driver before installing the newer one. [/i]

According to this user, a clean install may help.

-Edit, MS Support shows your error to be pretty vague

In reply to Just Updated

It basically says anything could be the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314063

You need to install the debugging tools and analyse the minidump files

In reply to -Edit, MS Support shows your error to be pretty vague

There are some utils which promise to determine the root cause of a BSOD, but I’ve always just used the debugging tools and figured it out myself.

In general, I would first update (or downgrade) video drivers, then stress-test the memory.

Which debugging tools

In reply to You need to install the debugging tools and analyse the minidump files

Which tools do you use to debug? I got WinDbg but have no idea how to use it.

Also, I could not find any instance of the previous video driver left after I updated it to the absolute latest. The fact that I got the exact same error message makes me think it might be something else.

And thanks to everyone who has tried to help so far!

This page provides basic instructions

In reply to Which debugging tools

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/818501

It’s a little confusing to the beginner, but if you post your stack debug here, somebody is sure to recognize the problem.

In my experience, though, this error is usually caused by driver issues. I would roll back your 9600 drivers and see what happens.

Rollback

In reply to This page provides basic instructions

I already had the drivers on the 196 version, updated to 260 version, still crashing.
I ran a memory test, computer crashed with a new BSOD “Page Fault in nonpaged Area” Stop 0x00000050

So I am thinking this means the ram is bad and failing….

That’s what it sounds like

In reply to This page provides basic instructions

If you’re crashing during RAM tests, that’s the most likely reason.

UPDATE`

In reply to BSOD crash during gaming

The BSOD does not dipslay what files were involved, says IRQL not or less equal.

Any help?

Sounds like RAM

In reply to UPDATE`

Try running some RAM tests.

Another update

In reply to BSOD crash during gaming

After some more research, I came to find that the Nvidia cards have a history of overheating and causing crashes, so I have a fan blowing into the computer case, and have been able to game with it for hours on end with no problems!

That seems to have fixed the problem.

Thank you all for your help and suggestions!

Darnit…

In reply to Another update

I was gonna suggest just that. Had the same problem years ago.

[Author]

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